As per usual, I'll spend the first couple of columns for this year rounding up the best of 2012 on DVD and Blu-Ray. Well, I say 'Best of”, but that's a dubious and loaded phrase. I'm fully aware that several of my friends whose opinions I value and respect hated some of these films. Or – even worse – were bored by them.

But, as I always say in the spirit of tolerance when someone disagrees with me: 'Idiots. What do they know?”

Obviously this list is a subjective one. I've tried to beak it down into a few categories but, as I was dividing them up, one thing struck me, which was the surprising number of films centred around various forms of family.

So that's where we'll start, with family films of sorts: husbands, wives, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters and children. Some of them are naughty, some of them are nice, but they all made for ripping yarns.

Let's start with the unhappy families.

Tilda Swinton was not very cheerful at all in We Need To Talk About Kevin. Primarily because her son, the eponymous Kevin, is a Bad Seed. He's horrible, almost from the word go. The film asks what you can actually do if your kid is a monster. Swinton is stunning, the dialogue is sparse and telling, and the use of time shifts and colour is sensational.

A Separation won last year's Best Foreign Language Film Oscar. It also won at the Golden Globes and was Best Film at the Berlin and Sydney film festivals. Documenting the complex difficulties between a husband and wife who want, but are denied, a divorce in Iran, it is drama so keenly observed and so multi-faceted that it has the tension of a thriller.

Also with subtitles is Pedro Almodovar's The Skin I Live In, a strange and twisted tale unlike anything else out there, skipping across genres with manifold skill, revealing a story filled with suppressed horror and perversity. Antonio Banderas is a crazy widowed Frankenstein doctor testing skin grafts. The family bit? You have to watch to find out.

Melancholia finds two sisters (Kirsten Dunst and Charlotte Gainsbourg) waiting for the end of the world as the titular blue planet threatens to collide and destroy everything. Oddly paced and generally peculiar, either profound or pretentious depending on your view of director Lars Von Trier.

And then there's Killer Joe and the most dysfunctional bunch of the lot: double-crossing trailer trash and a cooly amoral hitman (Matthew McConaughey). This is strong stuff – violent, nasty, intermittently very perverse. It's also compulsively watchable and often jaw-dropping in its transgressions.

Fortunately there were happy families too, or at least tolerant ones. George Clooney's clan in The Descendants aren't actually happy. His wife has had a skiing accident and his kids hate him. But they're in Hawaii and I defy anyone not to be charmed by the honesty, humour and humanity on display.

The same is true in little Welsh charmer Submarine, which has an Adrian Mole vibe, following Oliver's attempts to woo pyromaniac classmate Jordana and his misguided approach to adding spark to his parents lacklustre marriage.

Martin Scorsese's Hugo, meanwhile, had a young hero without family finding it in the form of the movies. It was an ingenious big-hearted film that may have not been strictly for kids but brought a smile to many a cinemaphile's face.

And my two favourites of this whole bunch: This Must Be The Place is a little gem of a film starring Sean Penn as a retired burnt-out rock star road tripping across America in search of a Nazi. It's eccentric and sweet, just like Penn's character, and constantly surprises with both its narrative and visual invention.

Then there's Moonrise Kingdom. Which is absolutely totally wonderful. Mixing the wilfully naïve with rigorous design and subtle nostalgia for lost youth, it's a joy from start to finish. Set in 1965 it takes place on the fictional New Penzance Island, the sort of places kids used to have adventures in Arthur Ransome books. It tells the story of two 12 year olds – he a khaki scout, she a rebellious bookworm – who fall in love and run off together to the other side of the island. Great cast, amazing detail, delightful jokes, a cool quirky soundtrack, and real heart.